One Last Perception
by ahsokanerd
Summary: A Separatist, frustrated with the Republic and Jedi Order's apparent immorality, shares his view that they have been doing immoral things for centuries.


One Last Perception

19 BBY

* * *

"Okay, I don't know about you, but the Republic's lack of morals is frightening," Gerry Cloeten suggested, casually taking taking another sip of his liquor from his favorite antique mug.

The group of Separatist freedom fighters, all Human, and their droids were ten feet under the ground in a makeshift bunker, awaiting further orders or an attack by the Republic's clone troopers.

"You know what's really frightening?" Sorcha Neil asked sarcastically. "The fact that you're drinking alcohol before we fight the Republic dogs."

Gerry stared at the bottom of his now-empty mug. "No, I'm serious," he said, placing the mug inside his knapsack. "Our planet was part of the Republic for, what, a couple hundred years? And that whole time we ignored some of the most obvious violations of morality or simply accepted them. Hell, here we are fighting them, and we're missing one of the biggest problems with their Republic as it is!"

Lieutenant Denzel Pender, the officer in charge of their small group of nine sentient beings and about a dozen droids, raised an eyebrow. "As Sorcha said, we're fighting them. Sure, we all have different reasons for it, logical or emotional, but you can be certain that we've seen the Republic's corrupt values," he pointed out. "What could we possibly be missing?"

"The kriffing Jedi," Gerry spat. "We've done our damnedest to fight them, but we almost always fail when one of 'em shows their pretty faces. Because of that, we haven't really thought about the Jedi themselves."

"What do you mean?" the team's demolitions expert, Erick, asked.

"How old is the kid we're fighting this time?" Garry asked.

"Hmm, I don't recall," Denzel said. He turned to the commando droid on his right and asked, "Who's the Jedi command suspects is leading the assault?"

"Identity unknown, sir," the commando droid replied instantly. "Intelligence pinpoints the Twi'lek girl's age at thirteen years of age. No Jedi Master is thought to be with her."

"Exactly!" Garry exclaimed triumphantly, rising from the dirt floor. "They're kids! We're fighting kids, and we don't care whether they live or die! Are we nuts? And the Republic is clearly crazy, and so is their Jedi Council, sending out these… children. They kidnapped these force-sensitive kids for years. What other horrors have they put them through?"

"They're not kids; they're creeps," Beckett said, cocking his blaster. "The only good Jedi is a dead Jedi, young or not."

"That's my point," Garry groaned, running his hands through his light-brown hair. "I used to think like you do now, but as I thought about it, the more I realized that they're probably just normal kids being forced to do horrible things. I have two little girls and a son at home with their mother, and you know what? If one of them turned out to be force-sensitive, I'd love them just as much as I did before. I doubt that their abilities would change who they are as a person. Sure, I'll kill Jedi, but not because I want to anymore - it's out of necessity."

"Well that's different, as you said," Beckett responded. "You can't compare-"

A piercing whistle cut of all conversation, and the group turned to see Sarah running towards them as quickly as she could. "The clones have attacked," she said, panting. Once she had regained her breath, she added, "The Jedi is leading them. All of our droids on the outside have engaged. We should probably get moving."

"Yes, we should," Lieutenant Denzel said grimly. "Alright, you know what to do everyone. Move out."

"Yessir," they all responded. Each one knew that they were going to lose this battle, but none of them voiced this aloud. With a Jedi at lead, doom was certain, and death was likely. The war had been going badly, and it was only a matter of time before the Separatist Alliance surrendered or was crushed under the might of the Grand Army of the Republic.

* * *

"Captain, commando droids at 4 o'clock," Neria warned, blocking blaster fire with her single blue lightsaber blade as she did so. She had been on several solo missions without her master before, and now she knew how to properly conduct a battle. She personally knew each of the clones under her command, giving her the advantage of when and when not to utilize each man's abilities. It caused her more pain this way when a member of her unit died, but in the long run, their sacrifice enabled more of their clone brothers to survive. This thought made the deaths easier to bear for them all.

"I see them," Captain 'Brick' CT–5147 said, nimbly dodging the multicolored blaster fire. Aiming at the commando droids, he rapidly fired at them with his twin blaster pistols, getting in two successful shots on each droid before moving on to the next target. He did not have a lot of men to take this bunker, but they would do the job. Besides, a Jedi with him.

"We're almost at the bunker, ma'am!" a clone trooper whom Neria could not identify called out. Indeed, they were close to the target. The green-skinned Twi'lek girl could almost make out the forms of individuals through the slits in the bunkers as they repeatedly shot at her.

"Fire a rocket at the face of the bunker," she ordered. "We need a hole to get inside. We should try to take this without killing all of them, as we need intel to end this battle soon."

"Understood, ma'am," Captain Brick said. He waved his hand forward. "Bring up the rocket launchers, men! Aim for sector 1138.41; don't do anything fancy."

Neria cut down the last of the droids that were outside of the bunker, then focused on deflecting blaster fire from the people on the inside. She was doing a decent job when suddenly she felt though the force her master's searing pain and heard him scream insider her head, second before their bond agonizingly broke. The noise caused by the explosion of the rockets her men had fired paled in comparison to the tremendous amounts of pain and grief she was feeling though the force.

Suddenly, a red blaster bolt found its way through Neria's crumbling defense, hitting her directly in the chest. With a thud, her wounded body painfully hit the ground, and she began to choke on her own blood. There were moments when she got a small amount of oxygen, but for the most part her lungs were beginning to fill with fluid. It was clear to her that her time to die had approached. But, oh, how she hoped that this was not it…

* * *

"Duck!" Beckett said as the rockets were fired. When he say that Garry was not moving, he ran up to him and threw them both to the ground, seconds before the rockets impacted the bunker's walls. Once the rubble had settled, he asked, "Are you alright?"

"Yeah man, thanks for that," Garry said, standing up and checking his blaster. He looked to his left at the large hole that the clones had created with the rockets. "Looks like they want to get in here and take some of us alive."

"Depending on your point of view, that's good or bad thing," Beckett said. "I'm guessing the latter. Let's get back to firing!"

Garry looked out of the hole again and noticed that he had a clear shot at the Jedi. Deciding to take the risk of deflection, he pulled up his blaster, aimed, and fired. To his shock, he hit the girl squarely in the chest, and she fell to the ground. "I got the Jedi!" he announced after he had recovered from his disbelief.

"No way!" Sorcha shouted in excitement, taking a pair of macrobinoculars from her utility belt and peering through them at the group white-armored soldiers, scrambling for cover, as their primary advantage over the group of Separatists had just been eliminated. "You did!"

"There will be time for celebrating later," Lieutenant Denzel said, firing a few rounds into the area he had last . "Congratulations Garry. I have no idea why or how it happened, but now that we have the advantage, let's finish off the remainder of clones and get out of here. There should be a ship behind this bunker that the rest of us who are alive can use to escape."

"How many of us are left?" Garry asked. They looked around the bunker, and realized that there were only five of them still alive. All the droids were gone as well, and some had mysteriously malfunctioned.

"Alright, here's the plan," Lieutenant Denzel said, turning on a holoprojector on his wrist. He pointed to a map that appeared of the bunker and the surrounding are. "We are here," he said, indicating a section of the bunker on the right. "The clones are here." This time he pointed towards a location a few hundred feet away from them. "How many were there left alive last time you checked, Sarah?"

"Four, sir," Sarah said, wiping her sweaty brow. "The clone captain and three regular infantrymen."

"Okay then," Denzel said, "it appears that we have the advantage of surprise and numbers, not to mention that they just lost their Jedi Commander. I say that we go out there, kill them, and use what little time we have left to destroy all of the data on the computers."

"Only command can authorize the destruction our data, sir," Sorcha reminded the lieutenant. "We haven't had any orders from them."

"We haven't had any orders from them in weeks," Denzel said. "It's well past the point of normalcy. "Something has happened, and we need to act before it's too late."

The group, which now only included Sarah, Garry, Sorcha, Beckett, and Denzel, were all in agreement and had a plan. "Let's do this!" Beckett shouted.

Grabbing their weapons, they ran as fast as their legs could carry them through the hole in the wall towards the hiding places of the clones, firing as they went. One of the clones dared to put his head up, and he received a blaster bolt to the face from Sarah's weapon.

The three remaining clones, realizing that they had lost, stood up and retreated, firing behind them to cover their retreat. One of them successfully shot and wounded Denzel, but before anymore of them could take a hit, all of the clones had been killed.

"Ugh, this sucks," Beckett said, sitting down on the ground. "I know this was just a small skirmish, but this felt like a battle. Denzel, are you going to be alright?"

"I'll be fine," Lieutenant Denzel said through gritted teeth, gripping his limp left arm with his right hand. "Just see what you can salvage from the bodies, and let's get back to the bunker and get out of here."

Nodding, they spread out.

* * *

"Oh my god, come over here everyone!" a woman's voice cried out. "Go and get some water. I think she's still alive!"

Neria groaned and tried to move her head so that she could look at the face of the woman instead of her boots, but she realized that she was unable to move. Instead, her legs twitched spastically and she coughed up blood. She could not speak either, as her throat was too dry and full of blood to form words. All that came out when she tried to speak was a collection of saliva, blood, and vomit.

Warm hands took her frail body and lifted her head, giving Neria a chance to look at the woman's face. It was odd, really. Moments ago they had been fighting each other for various political, ideological, and moral reasons. Now she was dying, and this woman's face told her story in a way words never could. She was probably a normal person with family and friends, who had been caught up in this war unwillingly when it had swept across the galaxy. In another lifetime, they could have been friends.

But that was not to be, as Neria was dying, and she knew it. A cup of cold water was pressed to her lips, and for a second she considered not taking it to hasten her death, but her body was in control now, not her mind. She took several sips, gasped for air, and then took a few more sips before she drank it all.

"What's your name, little one?" the woman asked kindly, sitting down on the ground and placing the bleeding girl in her lap. She gestured at herself and the three other Humans, who were now sitting around her. "My name is Sorcha. These are my companions, Garry, Sarah, and Denzel."

"N-Neria," she said, her body twitching in pain.

"Neria," Sorcha repeated, putting a cool damp cloth on the Twi'lek's forehead. "That's a pretty name," she said softly. She was handed another cup of water and she said, "Here, drink this."

Painfully, Neria turned her head away from the offered cup of water. She coughed up more blood, then asked weakly, "W-why haven't you k-killed me yet?" Her vision began to blur and her legs were numb. Her hands lay useless at her sides.

A strange looked passed over Sorcha's face. "Jedi aren't the only ones who don't kill the unarmed," she said, looking off into the distant sky.

Neria wanted to laugh, but she could not, and instead she began to cry from the pain. "Y-you already hurt me," she said, gasping for air. "You… c-can't make it hurt more." She sobbed as her vision went blank; and as the world began to grow quiet, as the small and always-present sound of her heart and breath went quiet, and as her body shuddered, she spoke one last word. "Please."

* * *

**AhsokaNerd's Corner**

Just a little one-shot story I wrote in celebration of _finally_ releasing a new chapter to my Ahsoka-on-Earth story, _Alien_. This story, _One Last Perception_, is something I could not get out of my head for the longest time. It was a little strange, as I don't see this actually happening in a conflict like the Clone Wars, but somehow I thought it would be interesting to write a short story about two things: (1.) a man who is upset about the Republic's apparent lack of morals, and (2.) a young Twi'lek girl who dies at the hands of and in the arms of a group of Separatists who aren't evil.

I hope you enjoyed reading this. May the force be with you.

- AhsokaNerd


End file.
